Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa: A Comparative Ethnography of the Khoisan Peoples

by Alan Barnard

Overview

The Khoisan are a cluster of southern African peoples, including the famous Bushmen or San "hunters," the Khoekhoe "herders" (in the past called "Hottentots"), and the Damara, also a herding people. Most Khoisan live in the Kalihari desert and surrounding areas of Botswana and Namibia. Despite differences in their ways of life, the various groups have much in common, and this book explores these similarities and the influence of environment on their culture and social organization. This is the first book on the Khoisan as a whole to be published since the 1930s.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521428651
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/28/1992
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology , #85
Pages:	380
Product dimensions:	5.94(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.79(d)

Table of Contents

Preface; A note on orthography; Part I. The Khoisan Peoples: 1. Introduction; 2. Ethnic classification, origins, and history of the Khoisan peoples; Part II. A Survey of Khoisan Ethnography: 3. The !Kung; 4. The !Xo and Eastern Hoa; 5. The southern Bushmen; 6. The G/wi and G//ana of the central Kalahari; 7. The eastern and northern Khoe Bushmen; 8. The Nharo; 9. The Cape Khoekhoe and Korana; 10. The Nama and others; 11. The Damara and Hai//om; Part III. Comparisons and Transformations: 12. Settlement and territoriality among the desert-dwelling Bushmen; 13. Politics and exchange in Khoisan society; 14. Aspects of Khoisan religious ideology; 15. Bushman kinship: correspondences and differences;16. Khoe kinship: underlying structures and transformations; 17. Conclusions; References; Index.

Editorial Reviews

'Alan Barnard has written a book that no scholar in the area of Khosian studies and few students in the wider field of hunter-gatherer studies can afford to ignore … To assemble all of the relevant ethnographic data on so crucial a group of hunter-gatherers in one volume and to accompany the same with crisp, topical discussions of some of the current issues of theory … is to produce a book of the highest scholarly relevance. Hunters and Herders is a worthy successor indeed to The Khoisan People!.' Current Anthropology

'Because of its detailed and comprehensive nature, this book should be used extensively by both scholars of the Khoisan people in all disciplines as well as by government and other agencies working for their welfare. It undoubtedly makes a great contribution to our understanding of the Khoisan and their cosmology, and indeed will serve as a refernce book on the subject for a long time to come.' SOAS

'Barnard's book is at once an encyclopedic compendium of Khoisan ethnography, in the widest sense, and an attempt at structuralist comparison between the various ethnographies. His survey is exemplary … both as description and as controlled comparison, his books is immensely valuable.' African Affairs

' … immensely valuable.' African Affairs

'brilliantly written and as excellently documented and produced … as one would expect from a book of such high standard.' Anthropos

From the Publisher